Richard Tipping - Ben Harper

Richard Kelly Tipping: Public Works School of Design, Communication and Information Technology, University of Newcastle, 2002. ISBN 1 920701 01 X Ben Harper This catalogue was published to accompany an exhibition of Tipping's works at Greenaway Art Gallery in Adelaide last year, focusing on his work intended for public display. Photos of selected works are included with essays by George Alexander and Alex Selenitsch. Tipping's art poems (he also writes 'normal' poetry) are a kind of concrete poetry made concrete - or stone, or aluminium. Sounding Silence, for example, juxtaposes two granite blocks carved with the words 'listen' and 'silent'; Earth Heart (Hear the Art) is a ring of neon letters with three possible readings. Mostly they work in the same manner as puns: semantic short circuits that open up new possibilities of meaning from their familiar but incompatible premises. The punning can be literal, as in the above examples, or built from visual or conceptual expectations - street signs with their familiar appearance, altered to read GO or ONE DAY. The essays provide helpful advocacy discussing the methods at work here and their impact on a public audience, particularly given their incursion on an information- and media-saturated society. Selenitsch claims that by "opening up the imagination rather than restraining it, Tipping shows how one can transform advertising and bureaucratic space into poetry on its own terms." But signs, such as "Airport" or "Australia Post" detourned into "Airpoet" and "Australia Poet", do function as a kind of advertising: for poetry, or rather the idea of a poet - the sizzle and not the steak. These and similar works, taken as a whole, take on a satirical note in the extent of their self-aggrandisement, suggesting an alternate universe where art and poetry claim a public engagement at least as fiercely contested as the consumption of sugar-water. The extent to which it opens up the imagination is questionable. The techniques are similar to those used by 'media hijackers' and other activists, which have since in turn been co-opted and reassimilated by the advertising industry. As for bureaucracy, works such as Sounding Silence are awkward in their monumentality and their didactic content, spelling out an edifying message which any high-minded bureaucrat or council could approve. The work in context is as inoffensive and vacuous as most other official statuary. If Tipping's work is weakest when trying to make a point, then the pieces where cognitive dissonance is allowed free reign are the most satisfying: a skull-and-crossbones logo bearing the motto LIFETIME GUARANTEE, or the mutant parking sign NO UNDERSTANDING ANY TIME (shown here four feet tall, telling the world and not just the street). These truly open the mind, albeit in a way that simultaneously gives information and takes it away, placing the observer in an altered situation instead of simply commenting its context. The nature of his methods and material encourages playfulness, which may explain why these works are more successful than those burdened with a sense of duty to society.